Team Romney Endorses Obama’s Economic Record (Sort Of)

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In response to the Obama campaign’s attacks against Mitt Romney’s job creation record as governor of Massachusetts, the Romney campaign has come up with a surprising defense: that Romney inherited a bad economy, and deserves credit for leaving the situation slightly improved.

In other words, they are tacitly endorsing President Obama’s justification for his own economic record.

The Romney campaign first unveiled the strategy in a press release last week, arguing that “Governor Romney inherited an economy that was losing jobs each month and left office with an economy that was adding jobs each month.” As MSNBC’s Steve Benen noted, “Obama’s campaign team could effectively issue the identical press release, after just swapping out the president’s name for Romney’s, and changing ‘state’ to ‘nation.'”

Now two key Romney advisers have doubled down on this line of defense. On ABC’s “This Week,” Eric Fehrnstrom argued that

On the jobs question, because this comes up repeatedly that Massachusetts was 47 out of 50 in terms of jobs growth…Actually, when Mitt Romney arrived, Massachusetts was an economic basket house. If you throw D.C. into the mix, we were 51 out of 51. By the time Mitt Romney left four years later, we were in the middle of the pack. We were 30th in the nation in terms of job growth.

This is what they’re doing, Chris…You take the first year, which is a low base year when the governor came in and took office, because it was 50th in job creation out of all of the states, dead last … and they’re averaging out over the four years. So, they are bringing down the gains of his fourth year in office, which shows the real impact of his policies and diluting it with the first year in office.

If Gillespie understands what the Obama campaign is doing, it’s because Team Romney has repeatedly used the exact same logic while trashing Obama’s “net negative record” on job creation. By claiming that Romney should not be held accountable for job losses that happened before his economic policies took full effect, Gillespie and Fehrnstrom are directly contradicting their primary attack against the president’s record.

Obama adviser David Axelrod best summed up the absurdity of the Romney campaign’s double standard: “They’re kidding, right?

Romney has already proved that he is a puppett, look at his relationship with Limbaugh and Trump, Look at the way he flip flops, Morning Joe a Republican ex congressman, has stated that out each issue he can agree with one of three of Romneys answers. howa4x you are right, but the republicans have to loudest media, and longest streaches of the truth (or we should say lack of truth) that they still have the advantage. It is not alright for anyone else to lie, but if it gets a Republican what they want, it is their right, and if you don’t believe it you ask them.

They don’t have an issue. there has been slow job growth for 26 months. The key word is growth, compared to what Obama inheirted which was 10 months of job losses of 40k/month. If the republicans in congress( and if the democrats would fight), backed some of Obama’s proposals the economy would be in much better shape

I would like to know why Governor Romney only served one term as governor of Massachusetts, especially since he seemed to be doing a good job as the governor?? I’ve never read or heard a reason why. Just wondering!